Cambodia's Lake Placid

JOHN LANDER PHOTOS
Buddhist monks from Kampong Khleang village look out on the lake.

The Star

Ancient body of water nestles floating villages, gives sanctuary to birds and feeds a nation

Mar 19, 2009
John Lander
Special to the Star

Kampong Khleang, Cambodia–Fishermen repair their nets as their wives pound out Cambodian fish paste or prahoc with mortar and pestle beneath houses built on towering 10-metre stilts.

Kids scramble between the stilts in yet another round of hide-and-seek as chickens forage for food. Out on the lake, floating grocers greet their shoppers arriving in tiny boats, as hawkers in other boats prepare steaming bowls of noodles for hungry fishermen.

Farther out on the lake, the market is gearing up for business as masses of fresh fish are displayed in giant buckets. A few hundred metres away floats the barbershop, a health clinic, the school and a church.

Tiny houseboats bob around the floating neighbourhood, sheltered by a thatched roof over makeshift walls – just enough space for a family.

The floating villages are friendly places that receive few visitors, and those who do visit usually make just a brief passing by boat. There is no shortage of parking here, nor is there any road rage – or indeed, any road – only miles of lake, a virtual inland sea.

The Tonle Sap may, on the surface, appear to be just a nice big lake but this body of water sets the rhythm of Cambodia, if not its very heartbeat.

One of the most abundant sources of fish in Asia, the lake feeds a hungry nation. With its unique connections between lake and river, plant and animal, man and nature – life on the lake and on its shores has not changed much in centuries. Apart from scattered floating trading centres, families live in isolation as they have always done, moving their stilt houses further inland with changing water levels on the lake's shifting shores or, if they are completely water-borne, merely pulling up anchor and moving elsewhere.

Be it a lone fisherman checking his bamboo fish traps or an old woman boiling soup on her tiny canoe, lifestyles here have remained unchanged by the passage of time. Despite the playful kids, friendly waves and smiles of the people here, life has always been hard work.

Kampong Khleang, one of the largest villages on the lake is made up of mostly stilt houses – some as high as 10 metres, about eight metres of which are submerged during the rainy season. One of the few structures that remains dry all-year-round is the local Buddhist temple, with its rather terrifying mosaic of heaven and hell on its outer wall – belied by the friendly resident monks and novices who are happy to show visitors around. On the other side of the lake lies the Tonle Sap Biosphere Reserve and adjacent Prek Toal Bird Sanctuary, home to hundreds of species of birds. The best time of year for birdwatching here is during the dry season, December and January. The government maintains a research station at Prek Toal.

Connected to both the Tonle Sap and Mekong rivers, the lake has a unique flood cycle. During the monsoon season, starting in May, the Mekong floods and reverses its flow, increasing the size of the lake fourfold. At its highest point in November, the nation celebrates with the Water Festival — fiercely competitive boat races are held, feasts are given and after three days of revelry the king of Cambodia cuts a ribbon to symbolically invite the water to flow back to sea. When the water recedes, the locals trade in their boats for trucks and motorbikes and farm the land during the dry season. Once the water level drops, the nutrients left behind create fruitful shores of fertile soil teeming with wildlife – terrapins, ibis, cormorants, and kingfishers.

It has been said that the Age of Angkor would never have happened without the Tonle Sap. Traces of civilization along the lakeshore and riverbank date from more than 1,000 years ago, notably from India which brought irrigation, farming techniques, Hinduism and its architecture – out of which rose Angkor. The lack of stone quarries in what is now Siem Reap suggests the massive stones that make up the vast complex of Angkor were transported from far away. Henri Mouhat, who rediscovered Angkor Wat hidden in the jungle in 1859, may have described the Tonle Sap best: "Here is a world of water. It is a territory of immensity, of loneliness, of the silence from the beginning of time."

John Lander is a Tokyo-based freelance writer.